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Monday, August 1, 2016

The Impact of the Bovine Industry -- Part 1

You may be wondering
what Bovine is? Bovine is leather that is made from cow hide. Cows are the
largest population and easiest to maintain source animals, making them the most
abundant and common leather source. Cowhide, although being one of the heaviest
and toughest leathers, is the most inexpensive due to its high availability and
resistance to dirt and water. 65% of all leather products produced around the
world are made from Bovine but how does it get made and at what costs (not
talking financially here) (Hoekstra & Chapagain, 2008)? In this mini-series
we will be following the production of Bovine leather from cow to the making of
a Coach purse through the eyes of the virtual water and chemicals used in the
process. By the end, we will have gained a vast amount of knowledge of where
some of our favorite accessories come from and what we can do to help mitigate
the environmental impact.

Hide is a byproduct of the food
production from the source animal, in this case a cow or calf. Let us first
look at what it takes to raise this cow to get it to the proper age and weight
to begin this process. It takes three years for a cow to grow to the proper
size and weight before it can be slaughtered, this is where we get the hide
from. Over the course of these three years the cow will consume roughly 1,300
kilograms of grains (wheat, oats, barley or corn) and 7,200 kilograms of
roughages (pasture, dry hay or silage). The production of all these grains and
roughages requires roughly 3,060,000 liters of water. The cow will drink almost
24,000 liters of water as well. Finally, approximately 7,000 liters of water
will be used in servicing the farmhouse and for the slaughtering process. So
far this is a total of 3,091,000 liters of water to produce roughly 537 kg cow
itself or about 7,756 liters per kilogram (Hoekstra & Chapagain, 2008). This is where the tradeoff
of the weight of the hide in proportion to the weight of the cow comes in.

The amount of “green”, unprocessed, hide that comes from a cow is
roughly 10% of the weight of the cow itself (Hoekstra & Chapagain, 2008). Let us use the weight
of the example cow above to figure out how much green hide will come from this
cow.

(537 kg)/cow × .10=53.7 kg⁄cow

53.7 kg of green hide comes from
our example cow. Tune in next time to learn how leather is tanned and the harm
that can occur to the environment from this process.